Remixpoint said the firm was still analysing the loss and offered no further details.

It said it would compensate customers for the losses. Around 2.5 billion yen worth of the missing currency was customer funds, with the rest owned by the firm.

Remixpoint shares plunged 18.6 percent following the announcement.

The incident is the latest in a string of similar cases at Japanese cryptocurrency exchanges.

In 2018, Japan-based exchange Coincheck suspended deposits and withdrawals for virtual currencies after it was hacked, resulting in a loss worth half a billion dollars at the time.

And the Tokyo-based MtGox exchange, which at one time handled nearly 80 percent of all global bitcoin transactions, was shut down in 2014 after 850,000 bitcoins (worth half a billion dollars at the time) disappeared from its virtual vaults.

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